Matrix Games Forums

Only released for Macintosh. Was it any good and did it compare to Pacific War?

Do you mean War in the South Pacific? Also another Grigsby game from SSI, was made for the C64 and the Apple II came out around 86.

There was also another game; QQP's Battles for the South Pacific which came out around roughly the same time as the original Pacific War(SSI), of course these were both for DOS.

Nope. Was a Macintosh product only; looked great and all but not worth getting a Mac for. On box back, I remember seeing an overhead view of task force under air attack and had names for all ships next to accurately detailed ship facsimilies. Believe a book (Jim Dunegan?) on strategy and historical context was issued as well.

Ahh James Dunnigan, that would be Victory at Sea. I didn't know that ever made it to release. It was a 360 product(makers of Harpoon), I thought it was cancelled. That was over 10 years ago.

Edit: Upon further investigation, it was never published. It was due to come out in 1994. Unfortunately Three Sixty went bankrupt that year.

[ February 24, 2002: Message edited by: ratster ]</p>

It looked so good, bummer. Funny, I remember it on the store shelves as a Mac product. It irked me that it was not available for IBM pc. Another sim I never tried but wanted to was "Action Stations".

Yeah I would have liked to have seen this one too. I had access to a Mac back then at work, and my boss was a Wargamer. <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> So we followeed this one pretty closely.

I have found sources that say it was shown at the 94 CES(the same year three sixty wen't bankrupt), and others that say it was published, but most current sources verify its status as "vaporware", which also jibes with my personal memory. <img src="frown.gif" border="0">

Back in the day I actually got Victory at Sea for the Mac. It had great potential (especially because you could play the smaller scenarios - Midway, Coral Sea, etc).

Unfortunately, it was one of the buggiest programs I've ever played. The game crashed constantly, making all but the smallest scenarios impossible to play.

I did get the Victory at Sea book by Dunnigan that was supposed to be part of the original manual for the game. Lots and lots of great information, but I believe that most of the people here have already read it or know about it.

I think I might even have the program on my old, old powerMac, but I doubt it. It had such potential..... <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

I knew I wasn't crazy...it was released for Mac. Danke!

I'm going to look since I still have apple softwared. One was from the australian company, which was stable, the other for PC from QQP. I do recall that somehow the QQP started to give me negative airplanes, and eventually crashed the system. But both games were good and had excellent AI.

I've had the game for about ten years now - and the last I heard it can be found at The underdogs for download. The biggest problem with the game besides ancient graphics is that it is somewhat cumbersome to master the game mechanics with the computer... But.. that said, it is the only game I have played that even comes close to putting you in the position of being a commander in WWII in one of those old slammed together CIC's with sloppy reporting, inadequate intelligence, and lousy radar, if any at all... Tremendous fun, and I wish someone would come up with an upgrade that wasn't a cartoon...Zim did a great lot of really good work pulling together the data on that one.

i remember Jim Dunnigan running a demo of that game "Victory at Sea" at one of the Connections. He said that 360 had gone off
on their own remake of the game & he and they came to blows
about it. Right after that the co. folded so that was that.

Jim Berg, Sr.

If you still want to get a copy of Action Stations (still the best WWII naval sim - crummy graphics notwithstanding); go to the following link and search for it

www.theunderdogs.org

Action Stations is definitely one sim every naval combat player should at least try once or twice. While the graphics are bad, the underlying mechanics of the game are just amazing given the time the game was developed. I found the user guide/manual to be first rate and chock full of information about surface naval combat gunnery. Highly recommended for gaining an appreciation of how far naval sims have come since then.

I dont think theunderdogs.net is functional anymore.

Yeah, its still there. She forgot to renew the url and someone snagged it. It has changed to this;

http://www.the-underdogs.org/

Ahhhh! Thanks very much! That is very good news!

Thanks for the correct URL. I haven't been there for a while. In my opinion Action Stations has never been topped as although it has no eye candy value (it looks like a naval plot which is how it is supposed to look) its accuracy is not only unsurpassed but not even approached. Great Naval Battles, 1942, Fighting Steel; all are games not simulations. The only problem with Action Stations fi you call it that is that it only covers surface combat. The other subsequent games have all covered that badly or not at all. There is no subsequent "definitive" simulation. It has as much replayability as Pacwar.